Views » March 17, 2014

Ending the Pain in Venezuela

If Venezuela is too polarized to be ruled by the Chavistas, it’s also too polarized to be ruled by the opposition. Neither side has anyone that can come anywhere close to Chávez’s indisputable charisma or leadership skills. Neither a government nor an opposition victory will resolve things, and neither is really possible.

Venezuela duele. On Facebook and Twitter, Instagram and Zello and many other apps, again and again: Venezuela duele. The phrase encompasses a world of hurt: Venezuela pains me, Venezuela is in pain. It goes both ways.

Beginning in mid-February, the country was wracked by confrontations between the Chavista government and the opposition. Young people overturned cars, barricaded streets and destroyed public property in frustration. President Nicolás Maduro responded by sending in troops, who teargassed and beat demonstrators. More than a dozen people were eventually killed. Scores were arrested.

No resolution is in sight, and that’s because of one simple, inescapable fact: Neither side has a popular mandate.

If you support the Chavista government, you can’t be too happy about how things are going electorally. For 14 years, the late Hugo Chávez won presidential election after election by wide margins. But his appointed heir, Maduro, didn’t hit 51 percent in last year’s election—a numerical illustration of the terrible split in the country. And while Maduro’s allies beat the opposition in total votes in December’s municipal elections, they won only 49 percent of the vote.

However, if you support the opposition, you can’t be pleased about those last elections, either. After building up the municipal contests as a referendum on Maduro, the opposition merely held on to its urban bastions of support, while the government kept its rural voters—and in the end, anti-government candidates only managed 43 percent.

And even if you support Maduro’s administration, you’re probably a little nervous about the economy. Oil revenues—95 percent of Venezuela’s exports—have dropped from $77 billion in 2012 to $58 billion last year. That’s a steep slide, especially considering Venezuela has Chinese loans to pay off, discount deals to Cuba and other allies, and heavy subsidies to keep domestic prices low. Back in November 2013, Maduro got the National Assembly to let him govern by decree for a solid year on economic matters. It’ll be hard to shirk responsibility for the economy come this November when the decree expires.

But then, if you’re with the opposition, whether or not you like Henrique Capriles Radonski (the unity candidate who failed to beat Maduro in 2012), you have to be worried that as his stock diminishes, the two anti-government leaders on the rise—Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado—are tainted. López, the charismatic right-of-center poster boy who led the February demonstrations before being arrested on a host of rather flamboyant charges, participated in the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez, and Machado’s NGO has openly taken money from the U.S. Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy, known for its undemocratic influence. That’s straight-up distressing.

Even for government supporters, however, it must be agony to see the Bolivarian National Guard attacking the Venezuelan people. It doesn’t matter what they believe, how many streets they’ve blocked or how many vehicles they’ve overturned— they’re Venezuelans. And you have to know in your heart that every single demonstrator can’t be a CIA puppet; there are real, honest-to-God problems in Venezuela (inflation, a currency that’s increasingly devalued, a high murder rate, lawlessness, a lack of basic goods).

But if you support the opposition, surely you’ve realized Maduro would rather die than resign. Calling for #LaSalida—Maduro’s ouster—without an actual plan like a referendum and without an understanding that even if by some miracle Maduro goes, he will be followed by a Maduro ally, is no plan at all.

Here’s the bottom line: If Venezuela is too polarized to be ruled by the Chavistas, it’s also too polarized to be ruled by the opposition. Neither side has anyone that can come anywhere close to Chávez’s indisputable charisma or leadership skills. Neither a government nor an opposition victory will resolve things, and neither is really possible.

At some point, a conversation has to happen—with mutual respect (a halt to the insults, to the sarcasm, to the provocations) and a willingness to listen (a halt to the violence, to the censorship, to the all-or-nothing mentality that’s plaguing all sides now).

Achy Obejas, a Havana-born member of the In These Times Board of Editors, is the author of Ruins (Akashic 2009, akashicbooks.com) and Aguas & Otros Cuentos (Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2009). A former staff writer for the Chicago Tribune, she is also the translator, into Spanish, of Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead 2008). She is currently the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College, Oakland, Calif.

How are the people doing? In the US the economy is actually doing quite well but the people are suffering. A strong economy that also includes a huge amount of poor citizens is nothing to brag about and does require new answers. If you can find a ghetto, or homeless, or hungry people, or harsh prison systems, you are not living in a good nation whether it is in South America or anywhere else.

Posted by glorybe2 on 2014-03-28 14:26:07

So long as "Power concedes nothing withot a demand," and Maduro remains in power governing as he has, prospects for such a turn toward civility and conversation remain pretty dim.

Posted by Louis Nayman on 2014-03-23 10:09:35

So this author would have us believe that the opposition is made up of everyday Venezuelans who have had enough? BS! Please note that the protests are taking place in upper income neighborhoods. The righties have been waiting like the proverbial spider and once Chavez died, they saw their opening. Of course the US will side with anybody over the Chavistas and poor people who are the majority, because the thought of anyone but wealthy oligarchs ruling is anathema. Many lies are being told about Venezuela, and even the NY Times has had to backtrack and withdraw incorrect statements. We cannot believe what we are told by the mainstream media which has an interest in preying on the fears of our underinformed citizens.

Posted by Susen Shapiro on 2014-03-22 13:37:01

Venezuela is the most lied about country in the US media and by US politicians. There are lots of myths and some of them are included in this article.

The reason there will be no agreement is because the oligarchs do not like the shifting of wealth to the people. Venezuela has gone from one of the widest wealth divides to the smallest in the Americas. Poverty is shrinking as is illiteracy and now everyone has access to healthcare. All of this means that wealth is shifting from a handful to the masses. The same is true for political and economic power, with community councils and worker-owned coops as well as community media building. All of this makes Venezuela one of the most democratic countries on Earth in the post-Chavez era -- the opposite of what the media and politicians tell us in the US.

Do not be fooled by these protests. They are a small percentage, limited to wealthy neighborhoods and wealthy students. While they look good on camera for CNN, they are not having the impact in Venezuela that the protests in Brazil, Turkey, Spain, Greece or the Arab Spring nations have had. See, e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/com....

And, the economic problems are more complex than you report. First, the economy is not in as bad shape as is reported in the US -- in fact, in many respects the Venezuelan economy is more solid than the US. Here's a good summary: "The Venezuelan economy is doing very well. Its oil exports last year amounted to $94 billion while the imports only reached $59.3 billons - a historically low record. The national reserves are at $22 billion and the economy has a surplus (not a deficit) of 2.9% of GDP. The country has no significantly onerous national or foreign debts. These are excellent indicators that many countries in Europe would envy, even the USA and Canada. The multinational bank Wells Fargo has recently declared that Venezuela is one of the emerging economies that is most protected against any possible financial crisis and the Bank of America Merril Lynch has recommended to its investors to buy Venezuelan government bonds."

Now there are problems. Inflation is high but nowhere near the levels of over 100% of the pre-Chavez era. There are economic shortages but a lot of that is due to efforts by oligarchs to undermine the economy, hide essentials in warehouses and dump them in Colombia to create false shortages and inflation, as well as the rich playing games with US currency to undermine the Venezuelan currency.

The real problem is the US and oligarchs want to return to the neoliberal era pre-Chavez. The want their wealth back (they still have a lot of it) and the US wants Venezuela in the US sphere of dominance. The US is spending tens of millions annually to build the opposition in Venezuela. How does one find common ground with people who want a coup (since they cannot seem to win an election)?